Aesop's tale of the clever crow just might be a case of astute observation. (Somehow, the story lacks the same panache when a great ape is the hero.)
posted by IndigoJones on Aug 7, 2009 - 14 comments

Crows can tell people apart. Can you tell crows apart?
posted by Artw on Jul 28, 2009 - 72 comments

The surgery to give Mr Dapple the wings of a crow was scheduled to take twelve minutes...
posted by homunculus on Jun 30, 2009 - 23 comments

Are scrub jays and ravens as smart as chimpanzees? Studies by Nathan J. Emery and Nicola S. Clayton suggest that crows, ravens, jays and other members of Corvidae may be chimpanzees mental equals. Evidence suggesting this includes tool making, the ability to use memories of past experiences and plan for the future, and relatively large brains.
posted by itchylick on Sep 12, 2005 - 50 comments

“Tool Use In Animals”, a tidy little informative set of pages from Dr. Robert Cook's much larger “Animal Cognition & Learning Website” at Tufts University. See also (worth repeating because it’s the coolest thing ever) the previously featured “Betty the Crow”.   ◊via milovoo in Ask MetaFilter◊
posted by Ethereal Bligh on May 3, 2004 - 5 comments

Tool Making Crow
"In the experiments, a captive female crow, confronted with a task that required a curved tool (retrieving a food-containing bucket from a vertical pipe), spontaneously bent a piece of straight wire into a hooked shape -- and then repeated the behavior in nine out of ten subsequent trials." The behavior was captured on an amazing video clip.
posted by Irontom on Jul 22, 2003 - 55 comments

Cultured Apes: According to a study published in today's issue of the journal Science, orangutans have been passing on a shared culture for generations (free registration required to view entire study). To what degree are animals intelligent? Are primates more intelligent than other animals? What about crows and ravens? (My favorite subject of animal intelligence studies is still Koko the gorilla.)
posted by jdroth on Jan 3, 2003 - 29 comments